Scores killed in blast at fuel depot in mass evacuation from Nagorno-Karabakh

An explosion at a crowded gas station in thebreakawayNagorno-Karabakh regionof Azerbaijan left scores of people dead and injured, as thousands of ethnic Armenians rushed to flee into neighbouring Armenia, the separatist territory's authorities said Tuesday.

The explosion took place as people lined up to fill their cars at a gas station outside the regional capital of Stepanakert late Monday.The separatist government's human rights ombudsman,Gegham Stepanyan, said Tuesday evening that 68 people have died, another 290 were injured and 105 are still considered missing.

According to Stepanyan, 21 bodies have been identified. A total of 168 of those injured were admitted into hospitals in Armenia in ambulances and helicopters.

The cause of the blast remains unclear, but Nagorno-Karabakh presidential aide David Babayan said initial information suggested that it resulted from negligence, adding that sabotage was unlikely.

More than 13,500 people about 12 per cent of the region's population have fled across the border since Azerbaijan's swift military operation to fully reclaim the breakaway region after three decades of separatist rule, Armenia's government said Tuesday morning.

WATCH l Ethnic Armenians leave everything behind, head to uncertainty:

30,000 Armenians and counting flee Nagorno-Karabakh

1 year ago

Duration 2:08

Roughly 30,000 ethnic Armenians who live in Nagorno-Karabakh have already decided to flee their homeland with many more potentially to follow. It appears many in the population of about 120,000 see leaving the long-disputed region in Azerbaijan as safer than the risk of living under Azerbaijani rule.

Gasoline has been in short supply in Nagorno-Karabakh for months, and the explosion further adds to local residents' anxiety about whether they will be able to drive out. The Armenian border is about 35 kilometres from Stepanakert.

Cars bearing large loads on their roofs crowded the streets of Stepanakert, and residents stood or lay along sidewalks next to heaps of luggage.

Thousands flee after military operation

The Azerbaijani military routed Armenian forces in a 24-hour blitz last week, forcing the separatist authorities to agree to lay down weapons and start talks on Nagorno-Karabakh's "reintegration" into Azerbaijan.

While Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians in the region and restore supplies after a 10-month blockade, many local residents feared reprisals and decided to leave. Azerbaijan's blockade of the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia caused severe shortages of food, medicine and fuel in the region.

Moscow said that Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh were assisting the evacuation. Some 700 people remained in the peacekeepers' camp there by Monday night.

Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous region within Azerbaijan under the Soviet Union, but separatist sentiment grew in the USSR's dying years and then flared into war.

Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, backed by the Armenian military, in separatist fighting that ended in 1994. During the war in 2020, Azerbaijan took back parts of Nagorno-Karabakh, along with surrounding territory that Armenian forces had claimed during the earlier conflict.

Under the armistice that ended the 2020 fighting, Russia deployed a peacekeeping force of about 2,000 to the region. But Armenian officials and regional authorities complained that the peacekeepers were unwilling or unable to end the blockade.